The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, August 24

Episode Date: August 24, 2017

The President's attacks on Republican Senators and Representatives this week may sabotage his plans for the fall. This episode: host/reporter Scott Detrow, White house correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional reporter Susan Davis, and editor/correspondent Ron Elving. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Quick reminder before the show, you can hear more of our political coverage on another NPR podcast, Up First, the morning news podcast from NPR. Up First is about 10 minutes produced and posted at 6 a.m. every weekday. Make it a part of your morning routine. You can listen on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Max. This is Patrick. This is Hannah. And we are calling from a gas station in southern Iowa. We are en route to see the total solar eclipse somewhere in Missouri. This podcast was recorded at 2 14 eastern on Thursday, August 26th. Things may have changed by the time you listen to this. To keep up with the latest NPR news, check out npr.org or download the NPR One app or just

listen to your local NPR radio station. All right, here's the podcast. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. President Trump wasn't too consistent in his public appearances this week, a scripted Monday address, an off-the-cup, grievance-filled campaign rally. But if there's one consistency in his political career, it's big public confrontations. Well, now Trump's picking a fight with his own party, calling out congressional Republicans. What does that mean for next month's big funding and debt deadlines?

We'll talk about it. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. And we are ready to tape the podcast because Ron has taken his jacket off.

All right, we have doffed the jacket, let's do this. All right, well, we all know that one of the most comfortable places for President Trump to be is to be feuding, usually on Twitter or at a campaign rally. Trump loves to frame things as a one-on-one beef. places for President Trump to be is to be feuding, usually on Twitter or at a campaign rally. Trump loves to frame things as a one-on-one beef. Increasingly, especially this week, he has been beefing with his own party. There was that big story in the New York Times earlier this week that Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have not spoken for weeks. Their last conversation was apparently a screaming argument. The White House put out a statement saying

McConnell and Trump remain unified. But then this morning, Trump tweeted, I requested that Mitch M and Paul R, that is, Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, tie the debt ceiling legislation into the popular VA bill, which just passed for easy approval. They didn't do it. So now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up as usual on debt ceiling approval. Could have been so easy, now a mess. He then tweeted again, saying his only problem with McConnell is that, quote, after hearing repeal and replace for seven years, he failed. That should have never happened. So we'll get back to the debt ceiling conversation in a second. But first, Sue, big picture, how much does this matter? You know, I think it matters because I think it is one more data point that suggests that the Republican majority really has not figured out how to work together or how to govern.

And remember, this is all happening. Everyone, the president's supposed to be on vacation. We're all supposed to be on vacation. Members are back home in their districts. They're trying to have a very different conversation than the president's having. They want to be talking about their agenda, about taxes. And the president just keeps picking these fights. And as we saw this week, when the president chooses to do that, it consumes all of the oxygen. A couple of things about I

think a bit are overblown. One, the fact that they haven't talked in a couple of weeks. It doesn't surprise me. It would actually be weird that they would be talking constantly over the August break. I think the fact that the last conversation was so negative in tone is what was notable. The thing I'd say about Mitch McConnell, he doesn't have to like you to cut a deal with you. And I don't think anyone's ever suggested that the majority leader and the president have a warm relationship or a personal relationship. It's always been a functional relationship. And from the congressional viewpoint, I still think that they view the president as someone who hasn't really tried to learn how to govern, isn't particularly interested in figuring out the process or how to get things done. And I think they also know that when you don't have a

president on board and on message, it just makes doing things hard. One other aspect of this is President Trump going after senators who are members of his party. Do you want to listen to President Trump calling out Jeff Flake and John McCain at a rally this week? Yeah, let's do it. One vote away. I will not mention any names. Sorry, I should say not calling out. Yeah. Very presidential, isn't it? Very president. And nobody wants me to talk about your other senator who's weak on borders, weak on crime. So I won't talk about him. And then reportedly backstage before President Trump's rally that happened on Tuesday night, he was meeting with people to talk about primarying Jeff Flake. And previously, President Trump had tweeted sort of seemingly

approvingly of one of the people who is running against Jeff Flake. We have never experienced a situation in which an incumbent president is simultaneously attacking the leadership of his own party in Congress and incumbent senators of his own party. Who are up for reelection. And in races that are consequential to their majority. The president has not yet formally endorsed a primary opponent for Jeff Flake, and he may not. Maybe this is just one of those Trump teases, right? If he does, this is when I think you're going to see sort of this war with Mitch McConnell really heat up because Mitch McConnell will go all in to get Jeff Flake

reelected. I have a statement in my email that I was just reading from the NRSC, which is the Senate campaign operation, saying the NRSC is unequivocally support Senator Jeff Flake in his reelection bid. And then you would have the Senate majority leader and the president United States at odds in a Republican primary. There's no roadmap for that. And that's why the McConnell Trump tension felt more real this week than a couple weeks ago, because that previous spurt of anti-McConnell tweets from Trump came at a time when Trump endorsed Luther Strange, the incumbent Alabama senator, doing exactly what McConnell wanted. They were moving in the same direction on that despite the tweets. But this time,

there's head-butting. Now, let's be fair. This is Washington, D.C., where people drive around with bumper stickers that say, I'd rather be feuding. That's not true. It's not terribly unusual. They would rather be feuding with their political opponents, not their same party. That's the difference. And let's look just very quickly at the language of that one tweet where the president gets remarkably specific about legislation for a change and says the popular VA bill, which just passed, could have been the vehicle for a debt ceiling. First of all, is that true? Absolutely not. Because you cannot ask the House Freedom Caucus in the House, which is one of your big hurdles to getting a debt ceiling increase. You can't ask those guys to suddenly

vote for a debt ceiling increase, which they have never done and swear they will never do, just because it's a chance to vote for veterans. They get lots of chances to vote for veterans. What they're not going to do is turn around and vote against veterans. So they're not going to let you put that on that legislation. That's not the decision of Paul Ryan. That's the decision of the people that Paul Ryan has That's the decision of the people that Paul Ryan has to deal with. So the president is just misappropriating his ire here and trying to stick it on a couple of guys, Mitch and Paul Ryan, who are very unpopular with Trump's base and with the base of the Republican Party itself. We've talked so much about Trump's low approval

ratings, which continue to stay low, but he is much more popular than Congress and congressional Republicans. That's right. Let's just look at the Quinnipiac poll, because then we're at least consistent in the numbers. They've got Trump in the mid-30s. They got Congress down at 10, 10 percent. It's like bizarrely low numbers for Congress. And then if you just talk to Republicans, among Republicans, he's still in the high 70s approval. But if you ask those Republicans about their own congressional leadership or about Congress in general, only 17 percent approve. So that's the leverage that Donald Trump is working at a campaign style event such as he had in Phoenix this week. He's working the difference between how popular he is

personally with the base and how popular the Congress is, which is not at all. What about their individual congressman, though, or congresswoman? Because there's this whole thing where people hate Congress, but then they're like, oh, but I love congresswoman so-and-so because she helped me with this. Not in Kentucky. Mitch McConnell is the most unpopular senator in his home state. I mean, but Mitch McConnell knows who he is, right? Like he knows he's not popular. He knows that he's not the face of the party. He's he's not here to make friends. And I would say what has been fascinating in the Trump era, too, is Paul Ryan, who not too long ago was seen as the future of the Republican Party. And you look at his approval disapproval ratings in this past week and there was one poll that had it as high as 33 percent disapproval or unfavorable among Republicans. You know, that is one third of the Republican Party saying they don't approve of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Let's talk about that for a second, because this is like a conversation we've had in the newsroom a lot. But I don't know if we've gotten it onto the podcast because any national politician taken more of an image beating in the Trump era than Paul Ryan, if you look at how he was portrayed and thought of before and now? I don't think so. Because again, Mitch McConnell's never really been popular. I think it's disapproval rating in his own state in his last reelection before Donald Trump was on the scene was at like 48 percent. You know, this is also where I think you consistently see Paul Ryan as being in one of the toughest places in Washington because there's no incentive to come out hard against Donald Trump because the party base loves Donald Trump and does not love Paul Ryan. And you're not going to get any credit

from Democrats when you do come out. Exactly. And Jeff Flake has shown that you get no credit from Democrats for criticizing the president. You only inflame the base. And it makes it harder to be the leader because a lot of rank and file House Republicans are very supportive of Donald Trump. But then if he doesn't sort of stand for conservative principles or these philosophies that he has spoken of his entire career, he then disappoints sort of the sort of philosophy wing of the Wall Street Journal editorial board orbit of the Republican Party. So he's been in this position where I think no matter what happens, he leaves one end or the other of the party just kind of disappointed in him. The Speaker of the House is just like not a great place to be in terms of likability. You know, you don't do that job because you want

people to like you. You do that job because you want to get things done. And I'm not getting things done right now, either. He's not. But the conversations I've had with people over the summer, the thing that they've consistently said to me is that they want to figure out the debt ceiling funding situation and that he is singularly focused on the tax bill. And I think that that is sort of how he would like to be judged on terms of whether this gets done or not done. Well, before we dig into that, can somebody give us a quick primer on the deadlines that are coming up next month that Trump and congressional Republicans are going to have to be on the same page on to get something done with. So Congress comes back the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend. September 30th is the end of the fiscal year for the federal government. So by September 30th, they need to either pass spending bills for next year to keep the government running or pass

a stopgap measure that just keeps everything running on autopilot. The other deadline to raise the debt limit and the debt limit is essentially the country's credit card. It's stuff that we've already agreed that we want to spend money on, and it's just a payment on that. The deadline is end of September 29th-ish is the date that has been set by the Treasury Department that they say if we don't pass an increase in the limit by then, the nation will default on its debt. So two things that have to happen. Here's what President Trump said about those coming deadlines during that rally in Arizona. Now, the obstructionist Democrats would like us not to do it. But believe me, we have to close down our government. We're building that wall. Now, we should point out that he didn't make that much of an explicit threat. But the last time the funding deadlines hit this spring, initially the White House said that funding bill has to include funding for a border wall or else.

And then congressional Republicans said, you know, cool story. And then that or else quickly disappeared. The bill passed. President Trump signed it. There was no funding for the wall. But at that same time, they also said the real fight will be this fall. This is what is new and interesting about this chapter in the shutdown wars, is that in the previous two or three iterations, the question was always, can Congress pass the bill? This time around, the question isn't so much, can Congress pass a bill, at least a stop cap bill?

The question is, when they send that to President Trump, is he going to veto it? And Professor Ron might know better than I. I don't know if that's ever happened. Didn't know, Clinton. Well, Bill Clinton vetoed an appropriations bill back in 1995. And that caused the government to shut down. And to the amazement of Newt Gingrich, who was then the Speaker of the House and the Republicans who were the majority, the blame from the public went to them for sending him something he had told them he would have to veto or not sign. So

in the end, they had to back down and come around to Bill Clinton's position. And he actually wound up resuscitating to some degree his own presidential momentum from that. But in this case, we have a president and a Congress of the same party. So it's very hard to see how they managed to figure out how to get the blame onto the Democrats. So Trump wants to build a wall. He wants funding for a wall. Of course, we need to point out that when he pitched this at every single campaign event, when he ran for president, the funding for the wall was going to come from Mexico. Has there been any movement? Because Democrats clearly don't want to do that.

Democrats are relevant in this process. Have we seen any movement from congressional Republicans? Because initially they didn't want to make that part of the funding fight. But recently this summer you had Paul Ryan with that build that wall video of him it that has been passed by the House. The question is never really going to be about the House because Republicans that control the House can pass that bill. The question is in the Senate where Democrats can filibuster spending bills and Democrats have said, we're not going to give you our votes to pass spending bills to build the wall. I also think Democrats where maybe they could have found some negotiating room, maybe we'll give you some wall money for something we want. I think what happened in Charlottesville and a lot of that has also kind of shifted the calculations of where everyone's coming back from the summer. And I think I think Democrats are increasingly dug in against this administration and the wall. I think that many Democrats see as racist. They see no political benefit to negotiating on something

that is so anathema to so much of their base. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and dig into these widely varying tones that we heard from President Trump this week. Support for NPR and the following message come from Wonder Capital, an online investment platform for investing in solar energy projects across the U.S. Earn up to 8.5% annually while diversifying your portfolio and combating global climate change. Individual investors financed more than 50 large-scale solar projects in 2017, offsetting the CO2 emissions from 14.2 million pounds of coal burned in the first year alone. Create an account for free at wondercapital.com slash NPR. Support for this podcast and the following message come from ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter

is committed to helping employers build great companies by making it easy to find and hire top talent. Using advanced matching technology, ZipRecruiter.com All right, we are back. We were speaking about President Trump threatening a government shutdown for next month. That shutdown threat came during a pretty wild Tuesday night campaign rally in Phoenix. It was one of three speeches Trump gave this week, and they were all very different. We posted an episode Monday night breaking down the Afghanistan speech, but in short, it was focused. Trump stuck to the script. A wound inflicted upon a single

member of our community is a wound inflicted upon us all. When one part of America hurts, we all hurt. And when one citizen suffers an injustice, we all suffer together. Tuesday, a little bit of a different tone. If you want to discover the source of the division in our country, look no further than the fake news and the crooked media, which would rather get ratings and clicks than tell the truth. So my favorite English teacher would always write on papers, who cares, like, what's the point? Like, you pointed these things out, why does it matter? Good point, good point.

Which is the question we always ask. Okay, so he's on script, he's off script. Why does this matter? Because when he's on script, he is what could be described as presidential in the conventional sense, in the traditional sense, what we expect to hear from a president. On the other hand, when he gets off script, he frequently goes into a kind of campaign mode. We heard a lot of this in Phoenix on Tuesday night, where he is railing against his enemies. Everyone is false. Everyone is crooked. Everyone is lying, except him. And the crowd is loving it and eating it up. Whereas when he's on teleprompter or he's

reading those very carefully crafted lines by other people, the audience is generally pretty quiet and respectful. President Trump today tweeted out, and I don't have the exact wording, but he tweeted out, what don't you guys understand? I give a somber speech on Monday because I'm talking about Afghanistan and the troops. I'm at a campaign rally on Tuesday. So, of course, I'm doing a campaign speech. On Wednesday, I'm with the veterans. So I give another somber speech. So, yes, that's right. He described the way he approaches these things. But the thing is, he usually doesn't. Like the prayer breakfast hating on the apprentice ratings is like the perfect example of how he often brings wildly inappropriate tones to to the wrong setting. But the thing is, he's actually president of the United States no matter where he is.

All 72 of those hours, all three of those nights, all three of those speeches. Everyone is watching, you know, Kim Jong-un or Angela Merkel or Vladimir Putin or everyone in America can see rally Trump and can see somber Fort Meyer Trump. You know, does it affect the way people feel about him? Does it affect the way world leaders feel about him or congressional leaders? Does it affect his ability to govern that he is so vastly different in these different settings? We see that as a volatility problem. We see that as something perhaps that would undermine confidence in his leadership. He clearly sees it as a positive. In another one of his tweets this on Thursday morning, he said, who have the Democrats got who can change tones? He clearly sees it as one of his assets, clearly sees it as

part of his shtick that really works for him. There's also something about Trump that to me is just, it's so consistent. I mean, there's this roller coaster of him, but this is the roller coaster of who Trump is. And when we talk about just in terms of approval and ratings, I'm always struck by the fact that I think Trump is pretty stable. When I see hit the polling about Trump, particularly at least in the past month, it seems consistent. Yes. And for a couple of months, it's been very consistent. He takes us on a bit of a roller coaster ride. But in terms of the people who like him and don't like him, I don't see the needle moving dramatically in the past month or two. And the other consistent thing is he's never going to not suddenly veer wildly in a different direction and take everybody by surprise and create a whole new set of headlines. And I think the fact that the Tuesday speech was at the convention center in Phoenix was very fitting because that's where he gave his big immigration speech last summer after this whole wind up of maybe I'm going to soften, maybe I'm going to rethink my immigration policy. Oh, look, I'm taking a surprise trip to Mexico City and having a conciliatory meeting with the president of Mexico.

Then that night he goes to Phoenix and gives, wait for it, the exact same hardline immigration speech you've been giving all along. So just, you know, bait one way, going the other way, back to where you started. It's how you keep the ratings up. It's how you keep people watching. It's how every cable network was carrying that speech for 77 minutes. Phoenix seems to have that effect on him. So we should walk through one specific part of the Tuesday night speech, though, and that is when Trump got into, I think, grievance mode is fair to say,

and wanted to relitigate the response to Charlottesville, which has been, of course, an ongoing national conversation ever since President Trump made those comments, seeming to dole out blame to both sides after violent attacks and racist rallies. So here's the president on Tuesday getting into it and reading from his initial statement about Charlottesville and leaving out some key details. Here's what I said on Saturday. We're closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia.

This is me speaking. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. That's me speaking on Saturday. There's some missing key words here. So let's listen to the original statement. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides. And then Trump goes on to say it's the media's fault that everyone's so upset that the things

have gotten so divided. What did we make of this detour and this rewind? Trump Tower on Tuesday after he had given a somewhat contrite version of the statement on Monday. And Tuesday, he comes out of Trump Tower, throws off the restraints and says, here's what I really think. I really think there were perfectly lovely people on both sides. And I think that there were some violent people on both sides. And he clearly equated the guilt for the entire Charlottesville incident to all the participants. Tam, Trump is not the only one who focuses selectively on some statements and not others, is he? I mean, this is something that Mike Pence does all the time. Yeah. So last week I was traveling with Vice President Pence while President Trump was doing various statements and restatements about Charlottesville. And it was really interesting to watch Pence

because he would sort of pick the part of what President Trump said that he liked. He would pick the most presidential version of President Trump and amplify that. And so, you know, after the Saturday statement, Pence on Sunday comes out and says President Trump condemned hatred and bigotry in the strongest possible terms. And then went on to say now Mike Pence speaking for himself and we condemn the KKK and white supremacists and there's no room in America for their their views. So he sort of takes one thing the president said and then adds on another thing the president hasn't yet said. President Trump on Tuesday night was remarkably similar to that, where he sort of picked the version of himself that he wanted out there. He picked the version of what he had said, the best parts of what he said, and then sort of was like, and the media is leaving out all this stuff. They're distorting at the same time that he was himself distorting what he had said.

By leaving out. He again, repeatedly criticized the media at this event. But I also think it's important to remember that some of the loudest voices criticizing how Trump handled this were leaders in the Republican Party. I mean, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Though they never said his name. They never said his name directly. But the point being that there can be no moral equivalence to these things and that how quickly, organically and severely Republicans

came out and said, we can't, this isn't the way we should talk about this. So it was like the media reporting on Republicans criticizing their president. The other thing that I think is really worth noting in this Phoenix speech that really struck out to me that I was surprised didn't get more coverage because it was kind of that both sides again, is when he was talking about these statues and he used the language of white supremacists when he said, we're losing our history and we're losing our heritage. I mean, that is such a dog whistle. That's not even a dog whistle. I mean, that's just like plain as day. Someone called it a person whistle. A person whistle. That is the language, the argument of white supremacists. But when he

said that, because I watched it at home, and when that happened, that was the moment where I was like, whew, this is the clip we're going to be hearing over and over again. And I was kind of surprised that it didn't get more of that attention because to me, that statement was almost more provocative than even on both sides. Yeah. And to your broader point on the response from congressional Republicans, I think they are also often selectively listening, selectively repeating Trump things, not just the differing from statement to statement, but events or things he does that they like or don't like. I mean, many of the same people who are criticizing pretty harshly about Charlottesville were happy to praise him for Afghanistan. Yeah. I mean, this is this is the conflict, right, that many Republicans were just appalled by Trump's response and handling of Charlottesville. But then they see the guy that

they want to believe in that same, you know, within the same period of time we're talking about Afghanistan, talking about other ideas. They still really want to work with him to pass a legislative agenda. So it's just an uneasy relationship. And I just don't think shy of Jeff Flake, many Republicans seem much to be gained by being pointedly critical of the president, because as Tan said, even though they were harsh, they never named President Trump specifically in their comments. Right. Republican lawmakers want to be on the same side as a Republican president. And a popular Republican president among Republicans. So there's one other news item to follow up on. This is still up in the air a little bit,

but NPR and other outlets are reporting that President Trump is about to issue a formal directive that would ban transgender military service. This is something that he initially said he was going to do via tweet, and it was remarkable that the Pentagon responded by saying, okay, we're not going to do anything about that until you formally tell us to do it. So according to NPR's Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowen, more than a dozen Pentagon and White House lawyers are vetting the language because of the assumption it'll end up challenged in court. The memo will likely bar enlistment of transgender persons and authorize the Secretary of Defense to discharge those currently serving, though NPR is hearing

that Secretary Jim Mattis is saying that it's very unlikely that he would discharge current service members. But there's a couple of things here. First of all, is the fact that so many people listened to President Trump's speech on Monday, where he talked about how one of the good things about the military is that everybody is equal, and they view themselves as all on the same side. And they said, well, how do transgender soldiers fit into your view of that, given that you said you don't want them in the service anymore? It's also just even going back further, just really inconsistent with who Trump was on the campaign trail. If you remember, even in his convention speech, when he kind of gave a nod to being a party that would be welcoming. And that was, at the time, big news. That wasn't

something you heard from the stage of the RNC before. And the belief that his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, would be sort of moderating forces on these LGBTQ issues. And the fact that when he tweeted that, it was unanticipated. You know, he hadn't briefed the Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill. He hadn't talked to the Joint Chiefs of Staff about it. I mean, this came seemingly from the White House political office, not with any policy input, sort of a solution in search of a problem. And one theory about that was that he was trying to get the House Freedom Caucus to get out of the way of that appropriation bill you mentioned earlier that includes money for the wall. And he thought that

with this tweet, he could please them and get them to go along with his entreaties to go ahead and move that piece of legislation, which did move, at least in the House. So that would be one explanation for why he did it when he did it. But why does he want to do it? That's the real question. There was also really notable pushback from certain voices in Congress, like I think of Orrin Hatch, senior Republican from Utah, a conservative Mormon who put out a statement disagreeing with the president on this, saying that there's value in all Americans and people can serve. I think, and we'll see what the final directive is, but his initial tweets also suggested

that transgender troops could not serve in any capacity, which I also think even among Republicans on Capitol Hill that may agree with him somewhat on that policy, even that was a bit too far. But the one thing that we can say about this, if this directive does come through, this is an example of the president tweeting something or saying something that seemed offhand at the time where the White House did actually follow through. But if is the key phrase there, because again, we're reporting that it's imminent. It hasn't happened yet. And oftentimes this White House will say something is imminent and it'll just hang out there

for a while. So that is the update, though. And we will obviously follow up if and when it does become an official order. All right. We're going to take one more quick break and we will be back with Can't Let It Go. home loan. With Rocket Mortgage, you can apply simply and understand all the details so you can mortgage confidently. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR politics. Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Stephen Thompson. There's more stuff to watch and read these days than any one

person can get to. That's why we make Pop Culture Happy Hour. Twice a week, we sort through the nonsense, share reactions, and give you the lowdown on what's worth your precious time and what's not. Find Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back with the end of the show. This is where we take a few minutes each week to talk about what we can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. Ron, you are up first.

Let's go otherwise for a change and light a candle for Rich Hill. Rich Hill is a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now, this is a fabulous team and he is having a good season. But on Wednesday night, he went into the ninth inning with a perfect game and had it ruined by a fielding error. Now, okay, maybe that doesn't sound like that big a deal to you. It's never happened before. No one's ever had a perfect game ruined by a fielding error in the ninth inning. And then an inning later, still a no-hitter, he gives up a walk-off home run and not only doesn't get a perfect game, doesn't get a no-hitter, he gives up a walk-off home run and not only doesn't get a perfect game,

doesn't get a no-hitter, doesn't get a win. But he made it through nine innings. He made it through nine innings without giving up a run, and it was a no-hitter through nine innings with no score, and that means he is the first person to lose a decision despite throwing at least nine innings with one or fewer hits and no walks allowed since, I know you know the answer here, Scott. Pedro Martinez? Lefty Leffield of the 1906 Pittsburgh Pirates. So it's been 111 years. I guess it was time.

Okay. Isn't it kind of a win-win for him, though, because people that are into baseball are so stat-minded that the fact that he made his own statistical history there might mean we're still talking about it. And that could be an explanation for why Lefty Leftfield is still part of our conversation. Exactly. That, and he has the best name ever, except he should have played left field. Was he right-handed? The truth is he was right. No, he was right-handed. He went by Lefty anyway. But don't you think it's amazing that there's anything that has never happened in all of Major League Baseball history back into the 1800s? There had never been a perfect game broken up by a fielding error in the ninth inning. All right.

Well, sticking with sports, Tam, you're up next. Yeah. So Robert Lee is a football play-by-play guy. He works for ESPN. He was supposed to be calling a football game this weekend for the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. ESPN decided that a guy named Robert Lee should not call a football game in a city where there was a big fight about a Robert E. Lee statue that resulted in protests that resulted in the death of a woman. The world said, ESPN, what are you thinking? This is ridiculous. It's his middle initial E. If the answer is no, then his name is not Robert E. Lee.

But the thing with this is that- Nobody ever refers to the Confederate General Bobby Lee. ESPN says in its defense this was not done because they were worried it would be insulting, but they just wanted to keep him out of the way from like, this was a meme conscious decision, they said. They just didn't want to deal with the awkwardness of it. But still. They wanted to protect him from the Internet haters and instead they inflamed the internet haters. But I think this actually is a political thing too, because I've been working on a story this week about what Democrats should focus on strategically. And, you know, there's a push from a lot of

Democrats, including a minority leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, to start taking down Confederate statues in the Capitol. And I feel like the type of people who are opposed to that idea, which our poll a couple of weeks ago showed 60 percent of Americans, often you focus on the most extreme cartoonish example. So it's not let's have a thoughtful conversation about the role of the statue. But oh, my God, did you see what ESPN did? This is so ridiculous. Yeah. And this does, you know, if you are looking for a case of political correctness run amok, this could be like exhibit A. I feel bad for that guy because he is just like caught up in the middle of this.

Oh, yeah. He's not political. He's not involved in any of this. And he's suddenly become this like already the focal point of like a really heated political debate. You know, and I'm like, poor guy just wants to call a football game. Right. However, now people are going to know who Robert Lee is. That's true.

Just like lefty lefty. And this whole debate is making one person really uncomfortable. And that's NPR science correspondent Stonewall Jackson, who's really having a hard time with this whole conversation. Sue, what can you not let go? My can't let it go this week involves Louise Linton, a.k.a. Mrs. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who this week traveled with her husband aboard a government aircraft and posted a picture of herself deboarding a plane that says United States of America alongside it looking fabulous. Great. She looked great. And she posted a picture on her personal Instagram account of her walking off the plane and sort of this sort of glam look. And Steven Mnuchin's right behind her. And there's like a scarf flowing in the wind.

She looks like a million dollars. She hashtags it and it says, great hashtag day trip to hashtag Kentucky. She loves hashtags. Spoiler alert. Is there a hashtag Kentucky? And in it, she hashtags the various pieces of her wardrobe, listing things like hashtag Tom Ford, hashtag Valentino, really high-end couture labels. And so someone who is not a friend of hers, but somebody who follows her on Instagram kind of posted on it, glad we could pay for your little getaway, hashtag deplorable. Could have left it there. Louise Linton engaged.

Uh-oh. And she then responded to this person she doesn't know on the internet which is always a mistake that many of us have made in our lives don't do it everyone you both have definitely Ron I've never seen you engage but every so often one of us will engage and you're like don't do it and you always regret it you always regret it and I'm sure she regrets it now somebody comes running towards our cubicle. Stop while you're behind. And so she responds rather snarkily and a lengthy response in which she also suggests that her and her husband are patriots and in part because they have paid so much in taxes. Mr. Mnuchin is one of the wealthier members of the president's cabinet. She called this woman

adorably out of touch and was just sort of rude back. This Instagram post has since been deleted. What's funnier to me about it is now Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, aka CRU, which is sort of a left-leaning ethics government group, has now filed a FOIA request for the Treasury Department for every official flight that the Treasury Secretary has taken because they believe that they use the government plane in order to be in the path of totality at the time of the eclipse this week. Crew says that they never would have obviously known about this trip had it not been posted on Instagram. So it's created this whole second wave

of headache. Lesson here is i know it's never tweet but maybe it's like never insta never never snark insta like instagram is just instagram is purely for the happy things in life uh so yeah miss linton never insta or just be nice on instagram yeah well there was this push to do like more political ads on instagram and i feel like it backfired because nobody wants to be anything other than happy on Instagram. Yeah, it's like puppies, brunch, weddings. Like nobody wants your snark on Instagram. All right, Scott, why can't you let go of?

I guess it's along those lines a little bit. If it is true that they took the plane in order to get a better view of the eclipse, because I know it's not the most original thing, but I honestly just can't let go the joyous collective experience that was the eclipse. It was just like a really fun thing that everybody here at work poured out onto our balcony to watch and just knowing that that was happening

all over the country and that you could talk about it and it was happening in real time and not just talk about online, but just have like conversations with anyone you met on the street about was really nice. And within the podcast world, my favorite Eclipse person was Domenico.

Because at the beginning of the day, like he is on many things in life, he was snarking on it. He was a hater. This is stupid. Yeah. I don't get it. And then he goes out, he gets the glasses, and got super into it and was excited and was like, I can't believe this. This is so cool. Oh my gosh, the moon is covering the sun.

He did not shut up the entire eclipse. Just sitting there talking to anybody who encountered him about how great it was. Then he posted on social media about it. I mean, he went from like denier to evangelist in like a seven hour period. I think that's inspiring. I think that's what we want from our celestial event. A friend of mine that works in TV always talking about weather stories

always said the reason why there's obsessive media coverage about the weather and events like this is it connects all people. It is the thing that crosses across every socioeconomic platform, every race, every religion. And it's like the thing that we can all talk about. And that's why you get obsessive weather coverage. So, Scott, when is the next eclipse? 2024. Right in the middle of a future presidential election. So that'll be a nice break from the 2024 primary coverage. The

country will come together. I hear that totality will be in Burlington, Vermont. Really? And it goes through Texas as well. Interesting. And Cleveland. Big eclipse for Cleveland 2024. So that is a wrap for this week. We'll be back in your feed Monday. And a lot of you often write us to say, can you talk about this on the podcast? Can you talk about that on the podcast? Most of them are pretty good ideas, but the fact is we just don't have an infinite amount of podcast time. But what we do do is do stories on the radio radio on NPR.org. So check us out

on your local public radio station or on NPR One. All right. That's the show. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elving, still editor correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.